Marketing your new product or service takes a great deal of research, planning, effort and cost. If a recent marketing strategy or plan has fallen flat, you can find yourself scrambling to recover in the aftermath. This can be especially painful if you were excited about the plan and felt certain it would result in an increase of sales, subscribers or whatever else you were hoping to achieve. Even the most successful of businesses experience an occasional marketing flop. Rather than remaining in failure mode, it’s important to make an immediate transition to recovery mode so you can provide your business with the opportunity to regroup and try again with a new plan.
1. Identify the Problem. To avoid making the same mistake twice, it’s important to identify the problem that caused your marketing plan to flop. Work backwards by starting with the problem and retracing your steps. Go over each preceding step with a fine-toothed comb to identify any red flags or action steps that, in hindsight, look as if they might have contributed toward the problem.
2. Review Your Plan. Once you’ve identified the problem, you can go back to the beginning of your marketing plan and review it with the eyes of wisdom and experience. You may find the plan could actually work if executed another way. Put your findings from Step 1 to work for you to determine whether to try again with the necessary changes or if it’s best to scrap the plan.
3. Respond to Customer Response. If a failed marketing plan affected consumers in any way, it’s essential to keep tabs on your business reputation to preserve it and avoid losing customers. Communicate with your customers face-to-face and via social media. If negative feedback or reviews have been left for your business, respond to them in a professional, solution-minded manner. Remember the key here is to preserve business and customer relations, not to get defensive.
4. Re-Identify the Intended Goal. Before you tweak your original plan or create a new one, it’s vital that you revisit your initial goal to make sure you and anyone else involved are clear on it. A misunderstanding or different interpretations of the same goal can muddy the waters, making it challenging to execute a successful marketing plan.
5. Start at Square One. Sometimes a fresh start is the only way to go. In this case, use everything you learned from your last effort to make the next one a success. Begin with your goal at Square One, determine what methods can help you get there and use knowledge of your customer base to help you get there.
As you follow these five recovery steps, you can determine what went awry with your original marketing plan, how to recover from it and enable yourself to start anew. Allow sufficient time to work through each step since rushing through can cause you to make unavoidable mistakes that lead to another flop. While moving through each step, learn the lessons available from the marketing flop that occurred to help you avoid it in the future and hone your marketing skills and techniques for increased success.
Contributed by Lucy Harper from Touchpoint Digital, a specialist internet marketing company focusing on digital communication.
